Good For Guam, Rolling Its Eyes as North Korea Again Calls It a Target

North Korea, which you may know from its increasingly
enthusiastic recent missile launches, claims to be eyeing
Guam next. On Tuesday, North Korea sent a missile over Japan, in
what North Korean State media called “the first step of the
military operation of the (North Korean military) in the
Pacific and a meaningful prelude to containing Guam.”

The Western Pacific island, which is a US territory with
military bases critical to US operations in Southeast Asia, has
been threatened by North Korea before. Most recently, North
Korea threatened to strike Guam after Donald Trump’s improvised threat to unleash “fire and fury”
on the country. They later took it back, and now it seems the
threat is back on the table.

Guam, for its part, is taking this all in admirable stride.
Though tensions between North Korea and the US appear to be
escalating, Guam doesn’t seem especially concerned about North
Korea right now. “We knew, based on North Korea events in
previous years, that with the joint exercise between the US,
South Korea, and its Allies, we can expect rhetoric and
activity in North Korea,” George Charfauros, Guam homeland
security adviser, told CNN.

In recent years, North Korea has begun launching missiles with
greater frequency from multiple cities across the country,according to theWashington Post. The Post also points to an
analysis by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies whichconcluded the following in
April:

The changes in North Korea’s testing behavior are consistent
with an increasingly capable and dangerous long-range
ballistic missile program. Although North Korea’s missile
program originated with a few, often disparaged tests in an
isolated corner of the country, it has evolved into an
arsenal of delivery systems capable of deploying a credible
nuclear threat. As North Korea’s most reliable missile units
train for nuclear war, rapidly improving longer-range
missiles remain under development.